History Gorbachev's Perestroika and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

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Laura Cummings focused on consolidating and maintaining his position in the party, he also considered how his actions and policy decisions affected the people he was chosen to lead. 22 Throughout his term he attempted to find and maintain a balance between his humanitarian sentiments and the harsh leadership that the party demanded of him. During the early years of Gorbachev’s term, a series of reforms were articulated that were aimed at restructuring the economy and loosening up the restrictions on the media and other forms of public opposition or openness. Because the economy was so weak and internal operations were inefficient, the system needed to be reformed and re-energized. Gorbachev recognized that need and attempted to fix the problems through a series of sweeping reforms headlined by glasnost and perestroika. 23 These two policies truly go hand in hand, and according to Gorbachev, “without glasnost there would have been no perestroika.” 24 In the simplest terms, glasnost is defined as openness. It allowed for greater freedom in the press and a better flow of ideas in and out of the Iron Curtain. Gorbachev argued that glasnost “awakened people from their social slumber, helped them overcome indifference and passivity and become aware of the stake they had in change and of its important implications for their lives.” 25 The intent of glasnost was to allow dissenting voices to legally be heard and also to allow people to see what conditions were like outside of the Soviet Union in the hopes that it would reaffirm their support for communism. However, the exact parameters and overall aims of glasnost were not directly articulated by Gorbachev or his government. 26 This failure to clearly state the purposes and meanings of policies were a problem that plagued Gorbachev’s reforms until the fall of the Soviet Union. Perestroika, on the other hand, was focused on restructuring the economy and helping stop its decline. Historian Robert Grogin provided the following definition of the policy:
Perestroika was designed to cure the economic inertia, overhaul the bureaucracy, the Communist Party, and even the military, and so make the country more competitive. The restructuring of the Soviet economy came to include a partial reduction of the central planning system, the introduction of market mechanisms, an emphasis on quality, the more efficient employment of labor, and the infusion of new investment and technologies into industry. 27 Gorbachev identified his intent for perestroika in a book that was published in 1987. He wrote, “Perestroika is an urgent necessity arising from the profound processes of development in our socialist society. This society is ripe for change. It has long been yearning for it.” 28 Essentially he was arguing that the system had to be changed and that the people desired that change. The fact that the economy was so bad prompted him to take action in an attempt to improve it and halt the damage being done by the astronomical spending demanded by rearmament and war communism. 29 However, perestroika was extremely complex and encompassed a wide variety of issues and reforms. 30 One of Gorbachev’s ministers, Yegor Ligachev,
Page 1 and 2: History Gorbachev’s Perestroika a
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Page 23 and 24: Bibliography Reference Works Brown,

History Gorbachev's Perestroika and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

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